Party like its 2007

In some weird aberration, I appear to be playing (and enjoying) more games from 2007 than 2011. It isn't completely weird when you consider the Steam sales, but the ridiculous Australian pricing of many games has forced me to move to a different supplier (Thanks ozgameshop).

Not only have I completed Bioshock, but I stayed up way past any sensible time last night playing the original Crysis because I was having too much fun. Contrast this with the multiple evenings of game play where I've been stuck on completionist grind (Portal 2, Terraria, Brink - damn your RPG systems for ruining my FPS, the second half of Borderlands and especially the first Witcher - except for Chapter 3 which played refreshingly quickly). I was so worried this morning about the guilty pleasure of Crysis that I checked its score on Metacritic to validate my feelings - it has a better score (91) than any game from this year with the exception of Portal 2.

(In other 2007 game news: My Team Fortress 2 addiction has got to the point where I've gone into voluntary withdrawal until I get an Enforcer drop. Idling is the new methadone).

I'm at the point where I dread playing a game that orders me around with quests and the lure of a new shiny. I've opened Fallout 3 and got as far as the main menu multiple times without actually playing it. My list of games on Steam has started haunting me as a list of things I should feel guilty about not finishing.

I'm enjoying indie puzzlers (Spacechem, Frozen Synapse) in bite size pieces, but small nuggety levels feel too much like quests to me at the moment.

I'd rather have a tasty trail of North Korean bread crumbs.

Finished Far Cry 2

I've just added Far Cry 2 to the short list of games I've actually finished.

There's probably twice that again of games I've gotten to the final boss fight and given up... Far Cry 2's narrative is instead extremely effective at motivating you for the equivalent of the final boss fight. After a symphony of betrayals of those you don't care about, it sings poetically for a brief shining few minutes.

Really a rather brilliant game from a narrative point of view, even after seeing the seams.

With regards to game mechanics, just needed the occasional weapon you pick up to not be completely rusted, and give you more running endurance if you choose to throw your existing weapons away. As it is, the checkpoints just grind you down once you have unlocked all the weapons in the game - extra supplies isn't reward enough for the time degrading your shiny armoury supplied equipment.

I've never been so glad for public transport.

Solium Infernum

I cracked after replaying the demo most of the afternoon and bought the full version of Solium Infernum. First full single player game I played a Sorceror, Infernal Cardinal Charisma 2, Wickedness 2 build - ranked at Marquis - and ended up winning in the last turn by gaining about 120 prestige off the previous leader with Charisma and Wickedness maxed out.

Then I played a Martial Prowess 4, Obscure, Master of the Sword - only at Lord rank - and won again. That's right: a 0 charisma build with Obscure which penalizes your tribute draw even more. I only ever got enough tribute to buy a second unit once - but fortunately played the first event at the start of the game and closed off the hell mouth for 6 turns. Even then, despite pressing my advantage and staying well ahead of the AI in prestige (including eliminating another player) it was still touch and go. The AI may have stuffed up once by not attacking my undefended (except combat cards) stronghold, but I kept scrapping up enough tribute for more combat cards - didn't get a chance to increase my Charisma to 1 until turn 60 or so.

Looking forward to some real human opponents now.

For those of you worrying about the early problems with the AI being passive, it has significantly improved in release 1.05a. It's still not ideal, but at least is a worthy opponent.

All of my demons so far have been named after Angband variant maintainers.

Games I've Not Played in 2009

Looking back on my year of gaming in 2009 makes me realise I'm stuck in 2008. With the exception of Torchlight*, I have bought no major commercial releases this year, and Torchlight is not a full priced game. With the ability to buy games as cheaply as the sales that Steam and other digital distribution services have on now, as well as the discounting curve that most major release games follow, I have no incentive to pay full price for a game. I am prepared to shell out not very much money for iPhone games, of which I've bought a few. Unfortunately, the only one I play on a regular basis is Civilisation Revolution.

Of the games of 2009 which interested me:

• Borderlands: Procedural weapon goodness. I'm there. Ridiculous Australian pricing. I'm not.
• Left4Dead2: Censorship Australia has censored my wallet. Yes, I can hack around it, but I'd rather not buy, on the basis that Valve has more chance of pressuring the Australian government to change that set of ridiculous laws then I do (I'm a foreign national, so I can't vote in Australian elections). Besides which, I'm more angry about other ridiculous laws that are getting passed here...
  
• Section 8: My multiplayer experiences this year have been cramped by a poor ADSL connection. And is it better than the continually evolving Team Fortress 2?
• ARMA 2: Waiting for the patch that fixes everything...
• Men of War / Order of War: Just didn't get into the demo enough to justify buying at this stage.
  
• AI War and Solium Infernum: Played the demos. I can see how these games could be good in a world where I had a lot more time than I do now. What I want is a strategy game that plays like Civilisation Revolution on the iPhone. On the iPhone. Uniwar doesn't feel like it has the depth I need. And I'm sick of tower defense.
  
• Dragon Age: I have Baldur's Gate disc sitting in the package, unopened. I've played the first 30 minutes of Oblivion and the first two hours of Morrowind. Why buy another RPG I won't play because of time constraints and the paralysis of 'which mods do I load?'
• Captain Forever / Successor, Spelunky, other critically lauded indie games: I'll play these as soon as they start developing them in a genre I enjoy. Just not platforming / scrolling shooter... to be honest, this is the one area I regret not spending more time on.
  
• Some console games which have got rave reviews: I still don't have a Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii. And I'd only want to play Metal Gear Solid anyway. To the point where I might go look for a PSP second hand.
• Some great sounding Nintendo DS games: Since I bought the iPhone, I haven't picked the DS up once. Actually, since Brain Training...

So a disappointing year all round. But it's been entirely my fault...

So what have I been playing?

• Civilisation Revolution: I had to stop playing this, and start functioning as a human being. So I did what I always do to stop making a game enjoyable for me. I redesigned it.
• Canabalt: Great two minute filler. Should really download the improved version. Review is here.
  
• Puzzle Quest: Challenges of the Warlords: Parts 1 & 2 for the iPhone: Review is here.
• Rolando 2: Bought this on the Edge's recommendation as iPhone Game of the Year (or at least #1 in their top 50 lineup). I can appreciate the vibe, but it just doesn't click for me.
  
• Far Cry 2: Haven't reviewed this beyond some snide comments, but the game is surprisingly pick up and playable if I have a spare hour or so. People complain about the check points, but I enjoy the flow of planning a path through or around check points and having it go horribly wrong. Feels repetitive if you play it too long in one sitting.
• Team Fortress 2: BFF.
• Plants vs. Zombies: So apparently this is a 2009 commercial release. Consumed it in one sitting. Never went back. Will get my wife to play this over Christmas some time.
  
• Defense Grid: The Awakening: Consumed it in two sittings - one with no sound due to a Windows bug, one with sound to see if the sound track and dialog was worth it. It really wasn't. Never went back.
• Red Orchestra: If you ever want to feel like a hero, play this game. I cannot recommend this FPS highly enough.
• Day of Defeat: If you ever find that all the players on your Red Orchestra server are bots, play this instead for a slightly slower, more cerebral version of TF2.
• Torchlight: Played the heck out of the demo. Bought it, while feeling ambivelent about the poor monster path finding, resulting kiting gameplay and the slot machine loot fest. Haven't touched it since.
• Stalker: Clear Sky: Ended up trapped in a warehouse that was just a buggy as the Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl release. Never made it out with enough motivation to keep playing. Would go back, but suffering from mod paralysis.
• Strange Adventures in Infinite Space and Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space: Really fun pick up and play games. Would be perfect for the iPhone other than screen size constraints. I'd recommend the Weird Worlds demo ahead of downloading the free version of SAiIS if you want to try before you buy.
• Vampire: the Masquerade: Absolutely enjoyed this while feeling guilty about playing this now I'm married. Stopped at the painful sewers section, which I understand is for the best.
• Dystopia: Still playable. Still fun. Still only play Mediums with Assault Rifles and Mediplants.
• The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butchers Bay: Really enjoy the production values and story. Couldn't figure out the stealth sections so shot everyone. Ended up in the second Super Max facility, where I apparently turned into Link from Zelda and have to do fetch quests for everyone. Will revisit this with an FAQ.
  
• Spore and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: Went back with the new computer, for an honest reappraisel and to give these games a second chance. They failed.
• Research and Development: This is my GotY. And it's a free single player map pack for Half-Life 2.

* And the Void, which I just picked up this morning off Steam.

CrossOver Games for OS/X

In one of my many alternate guises, I happen to be a Mac user. So it's with interest that I see that Codeweavers have released CrossOver Games, a games dedicated version of CrossOver Office. I already use CrossOver Office for game playing on the Mac - you'd have difficulty levering me away from my Team Fortress 2 fix at the moment. But CrossOver Games is built on a newer and shinier Wine version, in which 3d graphics support has improved significantly.

So far, I've just downloaded and installed Steam, which seems... steamier. The interface is a lot snappier and the CrossOver games downloader included lots of fonts, which appears to fix the many steam font issues. There's still refresh problems on the interface and the Macbook CPU fan starts spinning as soon as it launches, but I can handle that.

I'm going to have to transfer all my Steam backups around to save on download bandwidth which takes a little fiddling. There's a suggestion on the comments section of the blog post announcing the release as to how to avoid this, but I can't see an easy Mac equivalent and I don't want to break things. I imagine it's just a process of linking more folders than the Linux equivalent, due to the different OS/X directory layout.

Games I've (not) finished playing

Portal seems to have kicked off a bit of a renaissance of the discussion about game length. This mainly revolves around the fact that Portal is a bit short, but finishes before it outstays its welcome, unlike many other games.

I've got a fair sized game collection, mostly supplemented by buying back catalog games out from Amazon while I was in the UK, inspired by various discussions on Eurogamer. I picked up Psychonauts that way, before it came out on Steam. And Deus Ex, before it came out on Steam. And System Shock 2, before it came out on Steam. Did I mention I occasionally have a bit of a timing problem? (Does anyone know if it'll ever be possible to re-register your non-Valve games on Steam - I doubt it).

And while I initially dismissed the discussion, I've just been thinking about exactly which games I have finished, out of about the 60 or 70 titles I own (more than a few of which are still in shrink wrap).

Games I've Finished
Half-Life 2
Portal
Metal Gear Solid 2: The Sons of Liberty - Alternated lives with a friend. Treated it like a movie night.
Halo 2 - I'm actually not sure whether I've finished this or not, now. It just dragged on into repetitive, badly designed levels, full of the same enemies. Over and over again.

Nothing more to see here.

Oh, you wanted to know what I haven't finished and why...

Games I've not finished
Half-Life - Read Xen was crap. Got to Xen. Decided it was crap.
Half-Life 2: Episode Two - Got to the final level. I had problems coordinating looking up, because I'm gaming on a MacBook laptop using Cross-over in windowed mode at the moment. I could work through most of the times this caused problems, but not repeatedly looking up to shoot stuff at Striders with my gravity gun.
God of War 2 - Just lost interest in Kronos. He just wasn't as interesting a character the second time around. And a lot of the same ideas got recycled.
God of War - Got to the Blades of Hades. Broke the controller in frustration. Decided trying to balance on beams whilst jumping slowly spinning blades wasn't fun (There's a moment pushing a box on the first level that nearly stopped me as well).
Zelda: The Wind Waker - Got to the final fight with Ganon. Figured out that 'yes, I had to bounce the light arrows off the shield'. Wasn't able to coordinate it and ended up firing my light arrows in random directions. Gave up.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake-Eater - Stuck on the final Boss fight.
Metroid Prime - Stuck on the first boss fight. I know what to do, but again, having to do it repeatedly under time pressure is stopping me.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - Stopped shortly after I left San Andreas. Actually, that's not quite true - the wilderness levels after it were entertaining. It was the 'learning to fly' mission that put me off.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - Kept getting distracted by having fun doing little. Then San Andreas came out. Not being able to climb or swim suddenly seemed stupid.
Oblivion - Got lost and trawled through random dungeons. Decided that it was fun, but at level 1, the dungeons weren't much of a challenge. Lost interest.
Morrowind - Had a laugh when a wizard dropped out of the sky almost on top of me with a 'massive jump' spell in his inventory. Stopped immediately afterwards when I saw a game completion video that used the said spell to finish the game in a ridiculously short speed run.
Psychonauts - Got to the Milkman level while giggling insanely most of the time (Except in the dull camp levels). Found a jump that required me think in non-Euclidean geometry. Did I mention I hate dying repeatedly on the same platform jump?
Brain Training - Stopped when I finally got to age 20 ahead of my wife. While drunk.
Trauma Centre: Under the Knife - Just as it gets interesting, this game hits a difficulty wall akin to attempting surgery after having cut through the major tendons in your hands with a scalpel.
Okami - Thought something funny was up when I had to fight the main enemy really early in the game (Actually, ending Okami there would have been perfect). Went through another two boss fights that were just not as interesting, then read on Game Intestine that I'd have to repeat all the boss fights at a later point in the game. Twice. Gave up when I had to race a magical ticket through a series of timed puzzles. That's right - a magical ticket.

I could go on, but I just decided to stick to the highlights. I'm talking about highly rated games that have attracted a huge following and great reviews. And while I'm by no means a brilliant gamer, I've got a lot more time on my hands, particularly at the moment, than say, someone with kids. Or a job, for that matter. So there is definitely an industry wide problem there, at least from my point of view. It doesn't help that I tend to spoiler myself silly.

Care to share your 'not finishing a game' experiences?

And if you're worried that this blog is heading away from talking about Unangband, this directly relates to problems in Unangband. The game is too long, and the difficulty curve too step later in the dungeon. I'll talk about that at a later date, but I have a hunch that games stop being interesting when you stop being given new toys, or being shown how to play with them in new ways.

Which implies that the Unangband should end when you reach level 40 (there are no mage/priest spells after that level), and dungeon depth 50 or so, just like the original Moria. Antoine, of Quickband and Ironband fame, is a great exponent of the shorter game, as is Steamband.

(Actually, I cheated slightly. I've also finished HL2: Episode One, and Minerva, and HL: Blue Shift and HL: Opposing Forces. And God of War, when I took a day off sick and spent 3 hours jumping those f&($!£ng Blades. Ironically, the level in Hades itself where you have to navigate spinning spines set with blades, I found easy to navigate by just jumping repeatedly. And I was used to dying senselessly by that point.)

In related news: How do you feel after finishing playing a game?

(I have a suggested fix)

Speculation on MGS4 boss fights

Anyone for speculation on the additional boss fights in MGS4? I can definitely tell you that Hideo is going to be doing stuff with surround sound in these boss fights. You can't name them Screaming/Laughing/Crying/Raging without considering the aural aspect in the boss fights.

Hunch will be Crying Wolf will be an arena fight like Vulcan Raven and Fatman, but where you have to track Crying Wolf by its cries - probably because it moves too fast to follow by sight.

And this leaked video of a MGS4 boss fight only confirms my speculation.

Speculative table of MGS bosses

Anyone simply comparing the bosses between the bosses in MGS1 and MGS4 based on the similarity of their names should well do to read the following formal analysis of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, particularly the analysis of the boss fights. Pay attention to the fact that Hideo Kojima likes to mess with your expectation of boss fights, and has done so since the original MGS1 fights.

Of course, no mention of the similarities could be complete without my own wild speculation. Its worth noticing that MGS2 had the least bosses in the series and MGS3 delivered more fights but possibly less variety (only 1 vehicle based fight). Much of the MGS1 and MGS2 speculative connections are elabourated more fully in the above analysis and I've only jammed them roughly into tabular form.

I'm sure you can argue for different positions for many of these. You could, for instance, swap the positions of the Sorrow and the End: I've placed them where they are because of the emotional association suggested by the Sorrow and Crying Wolf, but the End probably deserves the place better due to the connection with sniper-based fights, and the Sorrow with Decoy Octopus through the association of fights that don't really happen.

Metal Gear Solid	MGS2: Sons of Liberty	MGS3: Snake Eater	MGS4: Guns of the Patriots
Psycho Mantis	Fortune	The Pain	Screaming Mantis
Decoy Octopus		The End	Laughing Octopus
Vulcan Raven	Fatman	The Fury	Raging Raven
Sniper Wolf	Vamp (2nd fight)	The Sorrow	Crying Wolf
Revolver Ocelot	Vamp (1st fight)	Ocelot	Revolver Ocelot
Liquid Snake	Solidus Snake	The Boss
Gray Fox	Olga Gurlukovich	The Fear
Hind-D	Harrier Jet	Volgin
Metal Gear Rex	Metal Gear Ray	Shagohod

[Edit: Anyone for speculation on the additional boss fights in MGS4? I can definitely tell you that Hideo is going to be doing stuff with surround sound in these boss fights. You can't name them Screaming/Laughing/Crying/Raging without considering the aural aspect in the boss fights.

Hunch will be Crying Wolf will be an arena fight like Vulcan Raven and Fatman, but where you have to track Crying Wolf by its cries - probably because it moves too fast to follow by sight.

And this leaked video of a MGS4 boss fight only confirms my speculation.]